AN INFORMAL pub lunch in Millicent last weekend marked 60 years to the day since notable Millicent residents Pat Muhovics and Deirdre Tiddy first met.
February 9 in 1960 was a Monday and the first day of the school year.
Ms Muhovics was then a five-year-old schoolgirl known as Patsy Lonergan who entered the grounds of the original Millicent Primary School for the first time.
Ms Tiddy was about to start her career as a teacher and was known as Miss Wilksch.
Among her 34 students in the sparsely-equipped timber classroom was Patsy Lonergan.
Over the course of their lunch at the Somerset Hotel, the pair talked about their school days as well as their common interests in later life with the Lake McIntyre Management Committee and the Millicent Field Naturalists.
Their paths often cross at functions held at the Millicent Gallery.
For Ms Tiddy, her teaching career lasted more than 38 years and was spent entirely in three schools in Millicent.
It spanned from 1960 to 2008 and was only broken when she took a break to raise her two daughters and one son.
After her early years were spent at Cadell in the Riverland, Ms Tiddy trained at teachers’ college in Adelaide.
“You were bonded in those days and received a small allowance from the State Government as well as having your fees paid,” Ms Tiddy said.
“You were then committed to teach for at least four years.
“If you didn’t, you had to pay the fees back.
“I received my first teaching appointment over the school holidays.
“It was to Millicent and I had never heard of the place and so I had to look it up on a map.
“I boarded with Miss Bridges at a house which still stands in Stuckey Street.”
She said it was a very different teaching world in the 1960s and female teachers were paid at only 66pc of the rate of their male counterparts.
“My timber prefabricated classroom was poorly equipped and I had just a box of wooden blocks,” Ms Tiddy.
“There was a library shelf but it did not have any books.
“They started to arrive after the small schools in the Millicent district closed down at Nangula and Pompoon.”
Undeterred, Ms Tiddy carved out a successful career as a junior primary educator at this school as well as Millicent South (now Newbery Park) and Millicent North.
The natural world featured in her teaching and science tables and living creatures, including tortoises, featured in her classrooms.
Not only did Ms Tiddy meet her teaching colleagues and 34 students in 1960, she also found love.
“My late husband Ian Tiddy came to Millicent midway through the year as an AMP Society representative and we met at the Methodist (Uniting) Church.
“We got engaged the following year and were married the year after that.
“I feel I have been very fortunate with my life.
“The South East is a wonderful place.”
For Ms Muhovics, her life has been devoted to her work, family and community interests as the Millicent squash and craft groups and being the inaugural deputy mayor of Wattle Range Council.
Ms Muhovics memory of her first day of school was being taken there by her mother and crying when she left.
“I had only previously been to a few kindergarten sessions run in the Anglican Church hall by Francie Gower,” Ms Muhovics said.
“Some of my classmates from the 1960 class who are still around Millicent are Allan Campbell, Dean Slaughter, John Osis, Ian Werchon and Jule Howe (nee Pratt).
“I was very quiet at school and I remember Miss Wilksch being kind and loving.”
Her other schoolday memories include playing on the swings, seeing the grade seven boys stoke the wood fires in every classroom and buying Craven A cigarettes for teacher Max Humphries at a nearby deli.
“Our very first classroom from 1960 is still standing,” Ms Muhovics.
“It is part of the Millicent National Trust Museum and houses some of the restored horse-drawn vehicles.”
